Special to Best Bets

Update at 2:32 p.m. Thursday: The Explosions in the Sky concert scheduled for tonight at the Knitting Factory has been canceled due to weather-related travel issues. No makeup date has been announced. Refunds at point of purchase.

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The mesmerizing instrumental quartet from Austin, Texas, Explosions in the Sky, doesn't fit the mold of any specific genre.

"If [a festival] already has a bunch of rock bands we'll throw them something a little bit different,” guitarist and bassist, Michael James said. “If they have a bunch of electronic bands we can fill the role of a rock band."

April marks the end of the band's short break from a year of touring for its 2011 release, "Take Care, Take Care, Take Care."

To his surprise, James said EITS has become a pretty good festival band. After its first performance in Reno at the Knitting Factory tonight, the band continues its tour with many back-to-back performances and countless festivals including Coachella, Sasquatch and more abroad.

The three guitarists and drummer create an organized and developed chaos on record and stage. The songs often start simple, then weave and build to a crescendo of melodic pounding guitars.

The band is also not shy about song length, and writing music they love is a top priority and goal.

"A band that's trying to write music to be popular with (a certain) set of people has always struck me as obvious and generally not very good," James said.

James said EITS’s latest release, and sixth studio album, is more texturally vast than earlier works and the band strived to make sounds interesting beyond the four members playing in a room.

Album and song titles are chosen carefully by an instrumental band because it is their only chance to communicate their personal meaning, though the ambiguity provides space for the listener to bring their own emotional complexity to a song.

"(Music) can communicate things that language fails at – abstract, deeper emotional areas can be reached with music that are much more difficult to reach with language," James said.

The lack of words lends the band’s music the language of a score, a genre of music it is familiar with, having written the soundtrack to the 2004 film, "Friday Night Lights."

The relationship between its music and score also impacts the story-telling ability of the band, which keeps its ears and hearts open to draw inspiration from anywhere.

"As an artist, or any kind of creative person, you never want to close yourself off to any kind of source of inspiration," James said.